I was leading the way and thoughts crept into my mind that I was being obvious. The reason I wanted to be in front was my first thought was that I would get un-handcuffed first. Then I realized it wasn’t a guarantee. Whoever was the closest to the Gooners would get un-cuffed first. I slowed down and let Trigger and Psycho catch up to me and Damon. I huddled closer to Torrez to start some pseudo conversation. We got to the gate and waited for it to open. While waiting at the gate to the Sally-port, the vestibule opened.
Torrez and three other Gooners didn’t offer any freedom from the handcuffs after the gate opened and I wondered if we would make it back to our cell in cuffs. Torrez scooted in front of us and stopped at the Sally-port and pulled out his keys. I was caught off guard and didn’t get in position first. Neither did Damon. Trigger got his cuffs off and I looked at his scarred thick knuckles while Psycho got un-cuffed next, then Damon, then me.
Trigger and Pyscho started talking to Torrez and that gave me room to get into the vestibule. There weren’t any guards inside the building. They were all in the tower, watching, waiting and wondering. I made it half way through the vestibule with Damon right behind me and stopped and looked back. I walked back as if I wanted to talk to Torrez right when Torrez shooed Trigger away so I turned with him on my rear right behind me and started walking again. I heard the vestibule we just walked through start closing and looked up at the tower through the glass. The guards were watching us. I slowed so Trigger would walk into me and he slowed and didn’t bump me. I forced myself to look like I had been pushed and jerked my body forward, then planted and turned and lunged fast and hard. I punched a backpedaling Trigger and felt Damon fill up the rest of the narrow width of the corridor. Trigger and Pyscho regrouped with a barrage of ineffective punches. I heard the tower hit the alarm button and everything other than the fight left my mind. My punches were beating Trigger’s and I felt and saw his face bouncing backward and crowded him. I was hammering his face with right left piston combos and felt the side of my head take Psycho’s punches for a second as I buried Trigger in the corner where the vestibule closed moments ago. Trigger went down under my barrage but popped back up and ran at me in a tackle that temporarily took my balance. I regained my footing and again reached his chin and eyes with a longer reach and sped up the velocity of right left straight combinations. The sound of a block gun pierced my adrenal survival bubble, “BOOM!” and I realized gas was burning my eyes. The sound of the vestibule door opening came next and I bear hug-grappled Trigger in tight to me to turn him where I needed him. It gave me a chance to see Damon still fighting Psycho. I looked up to again to see the guard in the tower pointing a gun at me. I couldn’t tell if it was another block gun or rifle and kept Trigger in the line of fire as much as I could and felt the blast of pepper spray from my right. The Gooners were in the vestibule spraying pepper spray and yelling, “GET DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!”, and I dove toward them on my stomach. Trigger came after me but was met by a torrential amount of pepper spray and blindly fell to the ground. I stomach crawled in a circle to face Trigger and saw Damon on the ground in the middle of the vestibule. He was painted orange from pepper spray and it looked like Psycho was done fighting and laying flat on his stomach near the inside of the building. An army of guards from other buildings were at the gate and rushed in. I felt a number of them stand on my lower body, back and the back of my neck while my arms got yanked behind me and up for handcuffs. A swarm of new guards arrived and I felt a few swings from Billy clubs hit my shoulders to make sure I was done fighting. I watched guards handcuff Trigger, then Damon, then Psycho.
There were over 20 prison guards with the 4 Gooners keeping Damon and I separated from Trigger and Psycho. Then the gym alarm went off. I felt a couple of guards force me to the ground and got down on my stomach again. The Gooners adapted and stayed to watch us while the other guards ran to the gym. Watching them run it was a joke how out of shape they were compared to the inmates. The noise from one block gun exploding after the other filled the air, with repeated microphone enhanced yelling, “GET DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!
The gym warriors weren’t stopping. We heard yelling, screaming and war noises from the combatants. It sounded like thunder, than another block gun, then the microphone, “LIVE ROUNDS COMING NEXT!”
The action kept going for another minute with two live rounds fired. We stayed on our stomachs for four more hours while over 50 guards and Gooners negotiated 16 Whites and 50 something Mexicans to the Hole-Ad-Seg.
A few minutes later we were lifted up and walked to the Sally-Port gate. On the way to the Hole-Ad-Seg I thought about things. Since we handled the war in the vestibule, nobody else could see the action. That should make it easier for Popeye to iron things out with the newest Shot caller for the Mexicans. I knew he wouldn’t bend, so we might be seeing him, or hearing he was in the hole with us in the coming months. Then I thought about how the U.S War on Drugs was just building bigger criminals where drug diseased souls were being bred into displaced alienated souls who survived by violence where in prison it seemed the only way. Lately, I always ask God, what should I do, my answer from Him is to write about it. As the hour glass turns, these, are the prison days of our lives.
A California Pelican Bay Prison Story (Race Riot) Page 4
